Lena Dunham is thrilled about her Directors Guild nomination, which was announced on Wednesday, the day of the Girls Season Two premiere in New York. “I found out because my publicist called me,” Dunham told VF Daily at the premiere. “I ignored her call because I thought it was related to my jumpsuit, and I was at a dog shelter. And then I found out, and I was so excited, because that’s, like, an amazing honor to me, just because it’s a jury of your peers. And you’ve got to know that, like, somewhere in that mix George Lucas is hanging out. It’s just exciting,” she gushed.

Very exciting, yes, but what was she doing at a dog shelter? “I was adopting a dog,” Dunham explained. “I have a new dog. I just got him today, but now he’s at daycare because he can’t come to the premiere.” She doesn’t know the breed. “He’s just 12 pounds of weirdness,” she said. “His name’s Lamby. He comes up to just below my knee, and I have a feeling we’re going to have a great life together. Unless you find out I’ve killed him in a few weeks.”

She hopes to bring Lamby with her to the Girls set, and, if he’s well behaved, he may make some cameos.

Dunham does not shy away from cringe-inducing scenes on the show, and at the premiere, at the N.Y.U. Skirball Center, the cast members talked awkward moments on the set, coincidentally dropping hints to what we’ll see in Season Two.

Ray and Shoshana will have several sex scenes this season, Alex Karpovsky says. “You know, I play basketball every day—it’s a big part of my life—and one time I really, like, ripped my lower back apart, which I do once a year, and I did it before a big sex scene,” he told us. “So trying to make love as an 84-year-old man was really embarrassing.”

Allison Williams’s____ funniest moment came while rehearsing a scene where Marnie is on the toilet. “I’m sitting there with all the camera guys, and we’re talking. I, like, do this toilet-paper thing, and I go to wipe, and it triggered about a two-hour conversation about whether everyone is a folder or a buncher,” she said. “And then people were just passing out rolls of toilet paper, showing their techniques, and these guys were creating elaborate, like, piles of toilet paper,” she added, laughing. (Can you picture uptight Marnie joking around while wiping herself?) “That was at first uncomfortable, and then it became very funny.”

“Having to be naked when I was four months’ pregnant was not fun,” Jemima Kirke said. “No girl should have to do that in front of 30 men! It’s just awful.” Kirke declined to explain what happens in that scene but did say that Chris O’Dowd, who her character married last season, is back with more screen time. “We saw that we couldn’t have him just for one or two episodes. We needed him back,” she said, adding that O’Dowd is as charming as he seems in the movies. “It’s, like, painful to hang out with him, because you laugh your ass off when you’re around him,” she said.

Lena Dunham’s most awkward moments were not so much the raunchy bits. “It’s funny. I have the most trouble acting like I’m in love with someone,” she said. “All the degrading sex I can do, but the minute I have to act genuinely excited to look into someone else’s eyes, I’m a disaster.” Does that mean we expect to see Hannah looking lovingly—or trying to—into someone’s eyes this season? “There is a little bit of it,” she said. “I can’t tell you exactly when, but yes, it’s happening.”

The premiere, hosted by HBO and the Cinema Society, was packed with celebrities like Debbie Harry, Zoe Kravitz, Steve Buscemi, Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy, Aziz Ansari, and Solange Knowles. An after-party at Capitale included a nail station where you could get yours done in the style of your favorite character, a booth for customized Havianas, which had a long line until well after midnight, and other kitschy attractions, like a giant gumball machine that contained little cupcakes inside plastic balls.

HBO always puts on elaborate parties, and Girls producer Jenni Konner says working with the cable network is a dream. “They’re really, really gracious with us, and they let us do things like have an episode where we stay with Adam and Alex Karpovsky for the whole episode,” she said. So yes, an upcoming episode of Girls will be somewhat girl-free. “It’s called Boys,” Konner said.

But don’t expect a spinoff just yet. “I don’t think Lena has time for another job.”

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